The Kirkus Prize is one of the richest literary awards in the world, with a prize of $50,000 bestowed annually to authors of fiction, nonfiction and young readers’ literature. It was created to celebrate the 81 years of discerning, thoughtful criticism Kirkus Reviews has contributed to both the publishing industry and readers at large. Books that earned the Kirkus Star with publication dates between November 1, 2014, and October 31, 2015, are automatically nominated for the 2015 Kirkus Prize, and the winners will be selected on October 23, 2015, by an esteemed panel composed of nationally respected writers and highly regarded booksellers, librarians and Kirkus critics.

KIRKUS REVIEW

No sooner does the Hardcastle family finish its New Year’s Eve toast than a knock at the door brings a sergeant from the Kennington Road police station with an urgent summons. A jeweler’s in Vauxhall Bridge Road has been robbed and its owner, Reuben Gosling, killed. Hardcastle wakes neighbor Sidney Partridge, who reports seeing a car with “one of those canvas things” and “them white tyres.” The detective soon discovers that a Haxe-Doulton convertible with whitewall tires went missing the night of Gosling’s murder. Its owner, Sinclair Villiers, is a posh gent with a snooty butler named Henwood. Servant and master alibi each other nicely. But Villiers’s son, Haydn, has a bad habit of borrowing dad’s car without notice. Although Villiers Jr. is supposed to be fighting in France, Villiers Sr.’s estranged wife, Hannah, admits that her son is home. What she doesn’t say, but what a bit of tailing reveals, is that he’s in London to bed his colonel’s wife. Worse than cuckolding his commander, young Capt. Villiers seems also to be receiving Morse-code messages from France about British troop movements, messages to be bartered to the Turks as part of a Zionist plot to establish a homeland in Palestine. There aren’t too many dots between the jeweler’s death and the Jewish state, and Hardcastle connects them with more speed than logic.

Perhaps the glossary Ison gives to explain terms like “boozer” and “nick” should have included an entry for “mishegas.”

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